With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

I call the Minister, whose birthday it is today.

Margot James: I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this very important subject. He is absolutely right. Data analytics have the potential to transform whole sectors of society and the economy—law enforcement and healthcare to name but some. I agree with him that a public debate around the issues is required, and that is one of the reasons why the Government are creating the centre for data ethics and innovation, which he mentioned. The centre will advise the Government and regulators on how they can strengthen and improve the way that data and AI are governed, as well as supporting the innovative and ethical use of that data.
The centre will look at issues relating to both personal and non-personal data. Lord Stevenson of Balmacara said in the other place that
“it has not been possible to find a form of words for the powers that would be used to set up this advisory board”—
the board is mentioned in the new clause—
“which would be sufficiently broad to give a proper basis for the ambitions that we all share for it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 297.]
I feel that the new clause brings us back to the point that Lord Stevenson said was problematic.
We plan to consult on the centre in the summer, after the chair has been appointed; we anticipate that appointment will be made in May. We would very much welcome the input of the hon. Member for Bristol North West, who is very knowledgeable on this issue.
The new clause would extend the commissioner’s remit far beyond the application of what is required of her as the UK’s supervisory authority for data protection. Given the breadth of the code that is set out in the new clause, it would essentially require the commissioner to  become a regulator on a much more significant scale than at present, and it would also create an overlap with the Electoral Commission, which is a separate regulator.
Three is more here that we agree on than disagree on, but the centre for data ethics and innovation, which we are in the process of creating, will, I trust, be the answer to much of the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman in his new clause. I hope that he feels confident enough in that to withdraw it.

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 22—Election material: personal data gathered by information society services—
“In section 143 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (Details to appear on electoral material), leave out subsection (1)(b) and insert—
(b) in the case of any other material, including material disseminated through the use of personal data gathered by information society services, any requirements falling to be complied with in relation to the material by virtue of regulations under subsection (6) are complied with.”
This new clause would amend the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 to ensure that “any other material” clearly can be read to include election material disseminated through the use of personal data gathered by information society services.

Liam Byrne: I am happy to end on a note of cross-party consensus. We agree that we need to modernise our hopelessly outdated election laws. The news a couple of hours ago that the Information Commissioner’s application for a search warrant at Cambridge Analytica has been deferred—suspended until tomorrow—underlines the fact that the laws we have today for investigating malpractice that may impinge on the health of our democracy are hopelessly inadequate. The Information Commissioner declared to the world—for some reason on live television on Monday—that she was seeking a warrant to get into Cambridge Analytica’s office. Five days later there is still no search warrant issued by a court. Indeed, the court has adjourned the case until tomorrow.
I suspect that Cambridge Analytica has now had quite enough notice to do whatever it likes to the evidence that the Information Commissioner sought. This basket of clauses seeks to insert common-sense provisions to update the law in a way that will ensure that the data protection regime we put in place safeguards the health and wellbeing of our democracy. We need those because of what we now know about allegedly bad companies such as Cambridge Analytica, and because of what we absolutely know about bad countries such as Russia. We have been slow to wake up to the reality that, since 2012, Russia has been operating a new generation of active measures that seek to divide and rule its enemies.
There is no legal definition of hybrid war, so there is no concept of just war when it comes to hybrid war. There is no Geneva convention for hybrid war that defines what is good and what is bad and what is legal and illegal, but most legal scholars agree that a definition  of hybrid war basically touches on a form of intervening against enemies in a way that is deniable and sometimes not traceable. It contains a basket of measures and includes the kind of tactics that we saw deployed in Crimea and Ukraine, which were of course perfected after the invasion of Georgia. We see it in the Baltics and now we see it not just in America but across western Europe as well.
Such a technique—a kind of warcraft of active measures—has a very long history in Russia. Major-General Kalugin, the KGB’s highest ranking defector, once described the approach as the “heart and soul” of Soviet intelligence. The challenge today is that that philosophy was comprehensively updated by General Gerasimov, the Russian Army’s chief of staff, and it came alongside a very different world view presented by President Putin after his re-election as President in 2012 and in his first state of the union address in 2013. It was in that address that President Putin attacked what he called a de-Christianised morally ambivalent west. He set out pretty categorically a foreign policy of contention rather than co-operation.
Since 2012, we have seen what is basically a history of tactical opportunism. A little bit unlike the Soviet era, what we now have are sometimes authorised groups, sometimes rogue groups, seeking openings where they can and putting in place disruptive measures. They are most dangerous when they target the messiness of digital democracy. Here we have a kind of perfection of what I have called in the past a dark social playbook—for example, hackers such as Cozy Bear or Fancy Bear attacked the Democratic National Committee during the American elections.
We also have a partnership with useful idiots such as WikiLeaks, an unholy alliance with what are politely called fake news sites such as Westmonster or indeed Russia Today or Breitbart, which spread hatred. We have a spillover into Twitter. Once a row is brewing on Twitter, we get troll farms such as the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg kicking in. Half of the tweets about NATO in the Baltics are delivered by robo-trolls out of Russia. It is on an absolutely enormous scale. Once the row is cooking on Twitter, we get the import into Facebook groups. They are private groups and dark groups, and it is perfectly possible to switch on dark money behind those ads circulating the hate material to thousands and thousands if not millions.
We know that that was standard practice in the German and French elections. There is a risk—we do not know what the risk is because the Government will not launch an inquiry—that such activity was going on in the Brexit campaign. I anticipate that there will be more revelations about that this weekend. However, the challenge is that our election law is now hopelessly out of date.
There is a ban on political advertising on television, which is well established under section 321(2) of the Communications Act 2003. However, although political advertising is banned on television, psychographically targeted ads on Facebook are perfectly legal. In fact, the Advertising Standards Authority, which has long resiled from setting itself up as a truth commission that regulates political advertising, does not patrol or regulate political advertising on television. That is not an issue  because there is no political advertising any on television, but there is a lot of it on social media platforms, where it basically goes unregulated.
In addition, we have no provisions to shut down material against hate speech, because the e-commerce directive is so out of date. The Electoral Commission has no power to pursue the foreign money coming in behind some of these dark social ads. When I pressed it on that, it was clear that it does not have the power to pursue things abroad. Ofcom, too, does not regulate the content of video on social media platforms. We therefore have a situation where none of the Electoral Commission, Ofcom and the ASA has the power needed to operate, police and regulate political advertising and political campaigns in the digital era. We learn today that the Information Commissioner does not even have the power to get a search warrant when she needs one to investigate bad behaviour when compelling evidence comes to light.
It is clear that the law is hopelessly outdated. I hope this is a subject on which we can agree. We are now at the receiving end of a new generation of active measures, which are one of the greatest threats to us since the emergence of al-Qaeda at the beginning of the century. We must redouble our defences, so the new clause would give the Electoral Commission the power to issue targeted disclosure notices that require those who seek to influence a political campaign to share with the world information about who is being targeted with what and—crucially—who is writing the cheques.